Experimental Performances of the Battery Charging System of an Autonomous Locomotive

This paper presents the experimental results of the battery charging system of an autonomous electric locomotive. In this goal, the traction converter is controlled by a dedicated strategy so it operates as boost rectifier. The main objective of the control strategy is to obtain a good power quality to the grid (unity power factor and low distortion of the current). The control strategy was implemented on the dSPACE DS1104 prototyping board and it corresponds to a cascade two loops control system: inner one that controls the grid current and extern one that controls the charging current. The correct implementation of the control algorithm was proved by the experimental results obtained on a specially designated stand. The experimental results show the very good performances of the entire system, respectively, the currents absorbed from the power grid have low harmonic distortion factor and the power factor has very close to the unity value.